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The Queen of Dreams by Peter Hamilton

The cover for The
Queen of Dreams is just brilliant. I love the blend of sinister and sweet.
It’s also very clearly marked with a big number 1 on the spine, something I
wished all series did – it helps booksellers and book-buyers alike. The book is an adventure
story where two sisters find themselves in a world they never knew
existed until they are plunged headfirst into it.

Taggie and Jemima Paganuzzi are spending part of the summer
holidays (when all the best adventures happen) with their dad in his secluded
ramshackle old house. It’s hinted at very early on that Taggie may have an
unusual ability; she half suspects she can cloudbust, although she wouldn’t
actually tell anyone she thinks she can wish clouds away. It’s Jem though that
spots the first odd thing that happens at their dad’s. It’s not everyday you
come across a white squirrel wearing glasses and talking. Jem chases after the
squirrel, but he disappears down the strictly out-of-bounds well. It’s not long
before another mysterious character arrives, making the girls more curious
about what is really going on.

They don’t have long to wait to find out more. Felix, that’s
the squirrel’s name, arrives in time to protect the girls from a squad of
four-legged armour-clad creatures wielding cudgels that drag their dad down the
well. Taggie and Jem are determined to rescue him. They need a crash course in
what’s at the bottom of their well: The First Realm.

The girls quickly find themselves in a world full of Karrak
Lords, trickster Gateways, giant turtles, Skymaids, Ethanu and elves. They find
out lots about their family history and their own futures. They have to be
brave and use all their talents, even one’s they didn’t know they had. The
sisters do get on very well together most of the time, but like any siblings
they have their moments. As one of four sisters myself, I liked that both Jem
and Taggie had to think about their relationship and try to better appreciate
the other one.

There are some lovely characters, such as the Queen of
Dreams herself. It’s a beautiful idea that she travels through her subjects’
dreams, soothing and comforting them. I also loved the elves, they were not
what I was expecting at all. Of course, having two girls as the main characters
in an adventure story gets my approval too.

I was totally drawn in by the beginning of the story. It
moves quickly from the ordinary world of school holidays to an unusual one. It
did start to lose my attention a little bit somewhere in the middle, although
I’m not exactly sure why. It maybe meandered away from what I thought was the
main plot. But, I loved the last third; it’s very exciting and filled with
adventure. The characters come into their own too, making plans and being
rather heroic. And the ending is completely awesome.

The Queen of Dreams
is by that Peter Hamilton, adult sci-fi author. This is his first book for kids, and the fact that its inspired by wanting to tell a story for his own children melts my heart. It's available now in hardback and eBook from Doubleday, and is the first in The Books of the Realms series. I think both boys and girls aged 7+ will enjoy it. The chapters are not too long so it would be fun for grown-ups to read aloud with kids too. The
second book in the series will be called The Hunting of
the Princes, although I've not seen a publication date for it yet. My copy came courtesy of the publisher.

The story of Lizzie Borden has a whiff of folklore about it, it feels hazy to me, apocryphal perhaps, something half known and uncertain like Washington and the cherry tree or the ride of Paul Revere. Shamefully, I had to Google both the latter two examples to double check they were the events I thought I was referring to. I choose them deliberately though - is it my Englishness that makes these events fuzzy to me? Do these stories live in the American psyche the way Magna Carta, Henry VIII and his six wives, and Jack the Ripper (to select three almost at random) live in mine?
I remember a book we stocked when I was a very young bookseller at Waterstones in Watford that looked at the psychology of children who murder their parents. The copy on the back of the book talked of Lizzie Borden. I remember half wondering about the case, then shelving the book away and moving onto the next armful. But it stuck in my m…

My nieces and nephews and I have a monthly book club, called Book Chase (although it sometimes gains an extra 's' to become Book Chasse). The rules are simple: we all bring something we've read during the last month, talk about it to each other, and eat snacks. We live tweet each meeting with the hashtag BookChase. Sometimes, when we remember, we Storify all the tweets too. This month, we remembered!